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How Does Dalton Differ From Romanticism?

Decent Essays

In his lecture on the vices of mankind, Dr. Frederick Dalton identified “temptation to riches, honor and pride as disordered affections” (Ignatius) that keep us astray from God. Dr.
Dalton criticized America’s materialistic culture and people’s failure to realize the beauty of the world before us. Dalton believed that the key to finding the right goods rests in the natural elements of God’s earth. Similarly, Romanticist poets preach the same doctrine of cherishing nature and abandoning vices, such as consumerism and mechanization. Seeing their nature slip away due to industrialization, literary Romanticists found solace in their poems-- professing love for nature and condemning the societal norms of encroaching into nature’s territory. Connecting with the …show more content…

Wordsworth is so desperate to get away from industrialized life that he just wishes for “glimpses” (11) of untouched nature. The author also alludes to the smoke emanating from the city and industrialization makes the world and sky darker thus clouding his vision, but as he escapes and gets further away from metropolitan society, he enters a brighter world. Through escaping, Wordsworth can finally “Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea / Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn” (12-14) and witness the apex of nature.
By distancing himself from society, Wordsworth can finally see nature at its finest. He believes that the further away he gets from English society, through abandonment of religion and leaving the city, he can witness what nature truly epitomizes. The couplet also reveals the author’s escapist intentions because he strives to attain the complete opposite of social norms—the Christian doctrine of monotheism—by worshipping ‘false idols’ through the praising of Proteus and Triton.
Wordsworth believes that society stands so far from Nature that he wishes to convert to

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